Dev Teams
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Dev Teams
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| This is my take on game development. -It is possible to make a complete game on your own, but the limits this would impose, when you are doing all the code and all the artwork, makes the prospect of developing these kinds of games uninteresting to me. I never wanted to do everything myself, and know that I can't be good at every aspect of programming and art. One or two talents is about as much as you can ask for. -"Collaberative" teams do not work. A team needs a leader who assigns work and sets deadlines. Artists are happy when they feel that the team is moving in one direction. -You need to tell your artists exactly what you want them to make. Avoid the "make something cool and I will throw it in" syndrome. Don't worry about being bossy. Who would you rather work for, someone with a clear idea on what needs to get done, or someone who just says "do what you want"? -You are responsible for always knowing how the game is developing, and in which direction it is moving. You need a definite plan on how the final product works, looks, and acts. Yes, it can sometimes be maddening to develop one step at a time, and sometimes doing it without proper artwork. Leading a team to design an engine, and then design a game with that engine is a very difficult task. It's like a mod team, except instead of using a pre-built, pre-tested engine, you are making one up as you go along. |
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| Yep... pretty accurate. Of course there is always those times that someone does throw something cool in, but usually it's above and beyond whatever the requirement is. A clear direction is always needed, although deadlines ... don't have to be very rigid. We don't really do deadlines, although things get done when we set a goal ... it's basically we just work as hard and fast as we can and go for that goal. No one's going to be 'fired' or anything because we don't have something done by some exact time. |
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| I think you are only limited by your skills & the time you have to develop the project, sure its easier if you have a team of skilled + motivated developers...but i think it really comes down to the individual... - I do agree about the whole online team thing though, its a nightmare, very very rare that anything gets done.. I would recommend that those planning to create a cool game find themselves some coders, + get the engine sorted, using template objects...there are plenty of content packs available online.. - the problem is that artwork takes ages to make, +having your artist wait until your code is functional, is not a good idea..artists are in great demand :p hehe..anyway..back to my SOLO project :p ;) |
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| I flew solo for a while. It can work to a degree, but if you're serious about getting somewhere in the industry it's expected for you to work in a team. You could probably make it ... but it'll be 10X harder. People respond better when you work in a team because then they know you can work well with other people and are more likely to network with you. |
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| How about if the artist is the team leader, and the programmer is the one getting told what to do? |
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| Blasphemy! |
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| Neither programmer nor artist should be director. Programmers will insist upon implementing new features constantly (I know because I've tried to do that with my engine), and artists will constantly come up with new ideas that will ultimately result in more time being taken (I know because I've tried to do that with my projects). Frankly, you need someone who knows both ends but who can control him or herself very well. Hence design documents, you know where you need to go, get a plan of what to do through stages of development and that plan combined with a design document is like a roadmap to the project's development. |
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| You need someone who is really a producer. I consider myself more of a producer than a programmer even though I currently write the code, I don't consider that my strongest suit. I did make everything for games at one point so I know something about each part but really I'm just good at putting my nose to the grindstone and also keeping direction on a project. How about if the artist is the team leader, and the programmer is the one getting told what to do? Games are art, anyone working on them is by default an artist. I don't care if you're sketching with code, verts, or a pencil ... it's all fleshing out your imagination with a tool to make your visions more tangible to others. |
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| Games are art, anyone working on them is by default an artist. Way to make things needlessly confusing. You know who I'm talking about. The ARTIST artist, ie the person universally referred to as "the artist". And hey, just cos something is art doesn't mean everyone who works on it is an artist, especially in a large production team. I think that in the case of videogames, at least 90% of the work is quite un-artistic on the whole. But anyway... If you have someone on the team who isn't making the art or doing any coding, it's obviously a pretty big team, and a lot of teams can't afford to be that big. Better hope they're a damn good level designer. Unless that person has got deep pockets, people aren't going to take to kindly to a leader who just says "make it so" to everyone. |
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| Hi This is My take on game development, for what its worth, It does take strong team work to create a game, you are correct in saying all members must have a well defined scheme of work. Im working with Attics to create ArxSpace. www.arxspace.com, its taken 2 years of work so far, we meet each week and work out what each is doing, and what needs doing next, this is done EVERY week without fail. You just got to be deciplined. It really does take a lot of hard work, there are no short cuts, its just hard hard slogg, sorry to say 99% of people arnt prepared to sacrifice most of there spare time to create any game. I would suggest that a routine is organised, its better if your team can physically meet each week. Its good if you have a decent relationship with the person or persons u work with. Although its hard work, its fun, I often do Bits of work of each task, never get stuck cos its often best to do bits on each part and mix and move between each. But i know What ive got to do, the whole project is broken down into chunks. Its helps that we both work or have worked in commercial software development. I dont actually think having a "leader" is that important, but good organisation is. Having an Artist than understands game development art is essential, you can have an artist whos very good with a pencil but is more of a burden than help, they just carnt understand why you arnt able to fit in their 20k poly model in the game and refuse to lower the polys cos ittl spoil their art. So if you got an Artist who codes a little CHERISH him/her like GOLD dust, there arnt many around!! Regards Ion-Storm |
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| Hey Ion -why has it taken 2 years? because of learning and teething problems? |
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| My guess is because it sounds bloody huge. |
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| You're continuing my thread! Fair enough, lets see how long before it takes this one to get locked :) Neither programmer nor artist should be director. Programmers will insist upon implementing new features constantly (I know because I've tried to do that with my engine), and artists will constantly come up with new ideas that will ultimately result in more time being taken (I know because I've tried to do that with my projects). Yes if they are pretty stupid people. Make a complete design, give it if need be 2-3 months constant designing and stick with it once you start... Just what you said. |
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| I think your going to get a lot of arguement whatever you do. Usually its all about compromise. I generally let Jeremy take first shot at his game designs, as so far they have all been games that he came up with before. And to some degree I have no choice as he essentially has to build the engine and control side of the game. Whereas I have control of the visuals most of the time. So like everything theres going to be compromise. It's alot worse for an artist when they don't have control of the visuals, one thing nice about the pipeline extensions is that they give the artist a lot of control of the visual side of blitz basic coding. That helps imansely and takes some of the weight off of the Coder, and the nice part of that, is that its often some of the more mundane stuff that gets taken away. Usually what happens in Leadfoot, is that we discuss Jeremy's ideas, and then find a middle ground, which can be pretty hard, as we both have almost opposite backgrounds in gaming. When we diagree we are very vocal about it. This was very apparent in Market Value, where a good 2/3 of development time was not really spent developing. But the game would probably not have been completed otherwise so it worked out in the end, and we both got what we wanted to some degree. I actualy think the game came out better for it, as it targets a broader market whislt being different enough that people that play these kinds of games will find it interesting. I think experience is whats most important. A coder or artist with none is most likely to kill a project. there's a difference between an experienced artist that has some enderstanding of engines pushing a coder to improving themselves and getting better art in the process. And the artist that makes impossible demands and ends up creating useless assets. It all comes down to experience in the end. Most game artists with experience, usually have done a lot more than just created art assets. In 2 smaller commercial dev teams I have worked with, Artists were responsible for scrpting, level design, some art direction, setting up AI and ended up with a pretty broad range of skills. Coders that can also do art, usually end up being the best game designers, as they understand both ends of the stick, and often end up developing the path that enables both sides to work towards the same goals, with a flexible and easy to use art path that takes the weight off of the engine coders and artists. In a larg team, you need leaders, in a small one, you need experience and compromise. |
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| Oh, um. You probably shouldnt add to much nes technology into the game once it's halfway complete lol. With Aerial antics we did the bulk of it with unwrap 3d as the exporter. Half way through pipeline came out, it is an amazingly useful tool, but we never used it past what unwrap 3d was capable of, so its main advantage was cutting out step in getting the art in the game and a few conveniences in the brush and texture department. We did however introduce sswifts shadow system, which took about 2 weeks of experimentation to get working right and must have added about a month to development time, as we had to optimize all the artwork for it to work efficiently. I think we did the right thing, but it would have been so easy to have feature creep to come in everytime something new turned up. As far as a definate leader goes, in a large team without a producer, the art director, and engine programmer and game designer will usually work together in establishing the direction a game goes in. And everyone else follows their lead. Allthough with commercial games, it seems the publisher and Marketing in particular have the final say in almost everything. Which is why so many games are dumbed down for the lowest common denominator. |
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| You left out your marketeer and business guy. Agree on money matters. Agree on work to be done. Agree on how credit will be given to the members. Agree on what happens to the work of a member who quits. Agree on a method of solving disputes and issues. Agree on a single vision. Politics will be an issue especially with creative people both coder and artists. Put it to a vote and clear the air. Constructive criticism, If you criticize something offer a possible solutions. Don't try to force your opinion on others. blah blah blah blah It's always a problem when people are working for free and the payoff is unclear. The best way is pay them, tell them what you want and bonus them if it's over and beyond and it helps contribute to a hit. Mediocre on a finished project is always better than quality work on project that never gets finished. Don't set your ideals and expectations of others too high know where the acceptable line is and where to stop at nit picking of detail. Polish comes later and there's never enough time to finish the polish. |
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| Lots of good advice so far.. Like Ice mentioned, in the end I think if you're starting to get serious that the most important issue is to FINISH something! It doesn't have to be HalfLife 9, but you'll get nearly as much of the basic experience from just creating a simple game that's COMPLETE and FINISHED. Even if it's a silly 3d tetris or whah_ever. I think there's more value in creating 3 simple games in half a year's time than spending a few years of your life on 'the big enchilada' that might slowly bleed to death. Don't try to beat the big guys, they got more money, more resources and better game-engines than you (and more at stake for more profit), so don't even waiste your time on competing with them. But in stead focus on something that is creative and original and most of all FUN. You don't need global illuimation, a million particles or an inverse kinematics animation system to do that. Imagine you'll be applying for a job at a games studio later. Being able to show a few silly games will weigh more than saying 'you know about this and that' but got zilch to show for it!!! A good game is not just about the real-time features and sexy effects. But also how you present it. How it starts up, how you menu's look and feel, how the user navigates through the interface. How you do your sound effects, can it be played by more than one player at a time, does it work online, can you share hi-score tables online, can players create their own characters/vehicles, what do the cut-scenes tell you, can you set difficulty levels and other special custom options, how do you tell the story to the player, how do you reward the him for special actions, is the game any fun at all, aren't the enemies too predicatable, etc, etc.. All these things end up getting you experience with aspects you never thought you'd had to do before. How to manage your code, file formats you got to get up with, how to organise your data, graphics, sound, etc. You'll also start creating modular code wich you can simply 'click' into your next project with a day's tweaking in stead of starting totally from scratch again and waisting months on re-inventing the wheel... Simple projects get you experience to work in a team, see who's really serious and who's not, where people's skills and ambitious lie and how to organise things better on the next project. my 2 cents on a monday morning; back to work.. :Danny) |
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| -"Collaberative" teams do not work. A team needs a leader who assigns work and sets deadlines. Artists are happy when they feel that the team is moving in one direction. I would have agreed with this, however, the jump around and alien breed community projects I've started appear to have worked rather well.Of course there is a need for someone to lay down the law and say if something stays or goes and basically manage the project, however this is really quite hands off. I will accept that both projects have lost their way a touch with people getting caught up in little details rather than the big picture, but to say Collaberative teams do not work is a little inaccurate. -You are responsible for always knowing how the game is developing, and in which direction it is moving. You need a definite plan on how the final product works, looks, and acts. Yes, it can sometimes be maddening to develop one step at a time, and sometimes doing it without proper artwork. Totally agree with this. Every project needs a dictator. |
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| I would have agreed with this, however, the jump around and alien breed community projects I've started appear to have worked rather well. To be fair, those don't have deadlines and aren't headed for market. Hence, people can deliver whenever they feel like they can spare the time - this differs greatly from trying to develop a product in "real time" (meaning, your income and financial stability depends on it). |
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